Tiny baby animal season continues.

Having an image of Michael Praed show up on my feed was not on my bingo card for this year but I am DELIGHTED to see it.

Goatlings started making an appearance as of last night.

Oh they’re adorable!

The ground is a sheet of ice covered in powdered snow (very slippery).

Really treacherous footing over here reflecting the current events landscape a bit.

I just keep thinking of the quote along the lines of, “You’re lucky women only want equality and not revenge.” #ERA

Such a cozy rainbow of naturally dyed yarn! 😍

🙋

Already talking about monetizing this platform? Why did we not all migrate to Mastodon instead?

I didn’t know until recently either! Last I heard people were desperately trying to get new printings to happen, but that was a few years ago. Looks like Red and Blue are sometimes available for around $250-$300 each second hand (saw Green book as high as $700!).

Something about these ancient fiber arts having special hard to acquire tomes of knowledge (only referred to by the color of the book cover because iykyk) feels very magical.

I recently learned that for weavers there is a ‘Green Book’ (‘A Handweaver’s Pattern Book’) which is a sort of rare and helpful holy grail of a book - and I love that for them. Shepherds have Laura Lawson’s ‘Red Book’ and ‘Blue Book’ which are both vitally helpful out of print books. #sidequests

World Animal Health Body Urges Tighter Bird Flu Controls After U.S. Death More should be done to control the spread of bird flu among animals to avoid more cases in humans, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said on Wednesday, following the first death of a pat...

Fantastic idea, but I did have to Google if this organization really calls themselves WOAH.

PSA to my friends in California near the fires: breathing in wildfire smoke is really bad for you (even if it’s not super thick where you are) but if you have face masks (N95, KN95, etc) those can help a lot

Also this doesn’t even look that bad, but the loser of the head bashing contest here (Vörður) was in bad shape for two days following. Shivering and lethargic, he got some drugs for pain and inflammation and seems back to his usual self now.

Please note I really wanted to hashtag this with # horny boys
But was concerned what would come from that. They have horns though, man, this pun- it writes itself.

Left two rams with only a cattle panel dividing them while I moved some ewes the other day and came back to a busted (the wire is ripped in the middle?!) cattle panel and two bloody rams. I should’ve known better with these hormonal dudes. Ridiculous, boys, just ridiculous.

Honestly, yeah. My grandmother fought for women’s rights since the 1940’s and I think it was probably a good thing that she didn’t have to see Trump elected (the first time).

Updated my bio here to include the phrase ‘word diarrhea’ so you know this is a very professional account.

The ‘fluffy chickens’ got an automatic coop door the other day but they’re either too blinded by their fluff or too… not smart… to use it. Anticipating needing to shoo them inside every evening for at least the next week. #silkies #darwinaward

It went from -2° to 55° and supposedly back down to around 7° this weekend so… that’s been a trip. Using this brief (maybe?) spell of thawed ground to drive in t posts for some new fence.

Happy belated Yule/Winter Solstice! ❄️

Welcome to our house, the floor isn’t lava but please jump over the salted sheepskins on your way in. #shepherding

Had been planning to expand our layer flock a bit for 2025, but with everything happening with #H5N1 that doesn’t seem wise now. In 2023 the stress of keeping our birds under cover during the migratory bird season for HPAI was a bit much (they also didn’t enjoy being cooped up, excuse the pun).

Photo of two Icelandic rams in the snow

Vörður and Dimmet in the snow. Apparently all I have to talk about is the weather and sheep/animals/plants. #IcelandicSheep

Photograph of a sheep with half of its wool shorn off.

Cary Wolinsky’s ‘Half Shorn Sheep’ tinyurl.com/4mm4xzym

A cool visual, would’ve loved to see it on one of the longer wool breeds.

7°F this morning and all of our wool is finally out to the mills - hoping to get it back in the form of lovely yarn around this time next year. 🐏🧶❄️

Rosie has discovered that she can sneak under the goat fence to hang out with Beowulf and they’ve been having a grand old time ever since.

An attempt to get away from Meta. Here’s a goat.